Francois Boucher: The Complete Story
Francois Boucher was the painter of the French Rococo at its most charming and most sensual. His canvases overflow with pink flesh, fluffy clouds, playful cupids and reclining goddesses, all in soft pastel colour. The favourite artist of Madame de Pompadour, he defined the look of luxury at the court of Louis XV.
To his admirers he was the painter of the Graces. To his critics he was sugar with no soul.
Born: Paris, 1703
Known for: Rococo mythologies, sensual nudes, Madame de Pompadour
Died: Paris, 1770
The look of the Rococo
Boucher gave the Rococo its signature flavour: light, ornamental, flirtatious and pretty. Venus rises on clouds, shepherds flirt in perfect meadows, cherubs tumble through rosy skies. Everything is graceful, soft and made to please. See what is rococo art.
His mythological nudes are his trademark, warm pink bodies arranged for pure delight rather than drama or moral lesson. See what is the nude in art.
Painter to Madame de Pompadour
His greatest patron was Madame de Pompadour, the cultured mistress of Louis XV and the taste maker of the court. He painted her again and again, surrounded by books, roses and silk, the image of refined power.
Through her favour Boucher rose to the top of the art world, becoming First Painter to the King and director of the royal tapestry works. He shaped how an entire court wanted to see itself.
More than the court could use
Boucher was astonishingly productive, designing tapestries, stage sets, porcelain and decorative panels as well as paintings. His art covered the walls, furniture and theatres of fashionable France.
Not everyone approved. The critic Diderot attacked him for artificiality and loose morals, complaining that he painted a world that never existed. The charge of empty prettiness has followed him ever since.
The decorator of a whole age
Boucher did far more than easel paintings. As First Painter to the King he designed for the royal tapestry works at Beauvais and the Gobelins, modelled scenes for Sevres porcelain, and painted sets for the opera.
His style spread across furniture, fans, fabrics and walls until it defined the entire look of mid eighteenth century France. Few artists have ever shaped the taste of an age so completely, from grand salon to snuffbox.
Francois Boucher, briefly answered
What is Francois Boucher famous for?
Defining the French Rococo with sensual mythologies and his portraits of Madame de Pompadour.
Who was his main patron?
Madame de Pompadour, the mistress of Louis XV and the leading taste maker of the court.
Why was he criticised?
Critics like Diderot found his work artificial and immoral, too pretty to be serious.
When did he die?
In 1770, in Paris.
Why the charm survives
Boucher also trained Jean Honore Fragonard, who carried the Rococo to its dazzling peak. Tastes turned hard against the style after the Revolution, yet his rosy, weightless world keeps drawing crowds, the perfect, slightly guilty pleasure of eighteenth century art.
One last detail. Boucher claimed nature was too green and too badly lit, and preferred to invent his own softer, prettier world on the canvas. It was a joke, and also a confession of exactly what his art was for.